Talk:Josef Kramer

Life before WWII?
I'm just curious if anyone thinks it necessary or worthwhile to add any biographical information on Kramer's younger days. Was he old enough to participate in WWI? How did he get involved with the Nazis? Etc. -Kasreyn


 * He was born 1906. I think the accusations against him are actually unfounded atrocity propaganda as he actually seems to have been a pretty reasonable camp commander (Belsen was used as quarantine camp). --41.150.63.77 (talk) 11:19, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * They were not "unfounded atrocity propaganda"; Kramer was a convicted war criminal, and was executed for crimes against humanity. And there was no such thing as a "reasonable camp commander". Please spare us your holocaust denial propaganda. RolandR (talk) 16:07, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Contents of deleted article 'Josef kramer' (lowercase k)
''The following was copied from said misnamed article before the page was deleted. A closer inspection should be done to ensure that potentially non-redundant, correct, parts of the material may be included here in the properly named article''. --Wernher 03:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Josef Kramer (born 1906, died 1945) was the infamous commander of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In this area of human tragedy Kramer excelled, and soon built up a somewhat sordid career record, having been trained at Auschwitz and having also worked at Dachau and Birkenau. In 1940 he accompanied Franz Hoess (who later 'trained' Kramer at Auschwitz) to inspect Auschwitz as a possible site for a new synthetic coal oil and rubber plant. This of course was a vital industry in Germany, given its shortage of oil. Kramer soon became somewhat notorious as a harsh taskmaster. One of the defendants at the Frankfurt Trial, Dr. Franz Lucas, testified that he tried to avoid assignments given him by Kramer by pleading stomach and intestinal disorders. When Dr. Lucas saw that his name had been added to the list of selecting physicians for a large group of inmates transferred from Hungary, he objected strenuously. Kramer reacted sharply: "I know you are being investigated for favouring prisoners. I am now ordering you to go to the ramp, and if you fail to obey an order, I shall have you arrested on the spot".

In August 1943, Kramer received 86 inmates who were to be killed with gas. With the ever-ready help of the SS, he had the women stripped and, once naked, herded into the gas chambers. He later testified, "When the door closed they began to scream. I put in a small amount of salt through a tube and looked through a peephole to see what happened. The women breathed about a minute before they fell to the floor." Kramer repeated this until all were dead. When asked how he felt about this he said "I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order. That, incidentally, is the way I was trained." Like countless other Nazis and Germans after the war, he claimed he was simply following orders. Perhaps a more famous similar incident was Heinrich Himmler's response to being showed a photograph of starved corpses at a liberated camp: "Am I responsible for the excesses of my subordinates?"

In late 1944, as the war entered its final climatic phase and Nazi Germany started lashing out at its enemies like a wounded and cornered animal, Kramer was transferred from Birkenau to Belsen, near the village of Bergen. Originally a small, even privileged, camp, Belsen had been expanded to serve as a convalescent depot for sick persons and displaced people from acoss northwest Europe. Although it had no gas chambers, Kramer's rule was so harsh that he became known as the "Beast of Belsen".

As Germany collapsed, the administration of the camp broke down, but Kramer never took a single step without filling in a form. On March 1st, 1945, he filed a report stating that of the 42,000 inmates in his camp, 250–300 had died from "typhus". On March 19th, the number of inmates rose to 60,000 as the Germans continued to evacuate camps that were soon to be liberated by the Allies. As late as the week of April 13th, some 28,000 prisoners were brought in. With the collapse of administration and many guards fleeing to escape retribution, roll calls were stopped and the inmates were left to their own devices. Corpses rotted everywhere, and rats attacked the living too weak to fight them off. Kramer remained even when the British arrived to liberate the camp. He remained indifferent and callous, and took them on a tour of the camp to inspect the 'scenes'. Piles of corpses were lying all over the camp, mass graves were filled in, and the huts were filled with prisoners in every stage of emaciation and disease.

Kramer was tried by a British military court at Lüneberg and was sentenced to death on November 17th, 1945. He was executed shortly afterward.


 * Both Kramer and Grese were interrogated shortly after the camp's liberation by Eric Brown, who spoke fluent German, and who had been asked to do so by Glyn Hughes. His opinion of them is on his linked article page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.53.190 (talk) 17:3e, 15 March 2018

Neo-Nazi & Holocaust Denial Section
Please put your contributions here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.28.169.31 (talk) 19:16, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

External links:
 * An account of Kramer's tour of Bergen-Belsen

Josef Kr"amer
I removed the redirect of Josef Kr"amer (sorry, can't type the proper umlaut here) since that's the name of a German athlete who participated in Athens 1906. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjetilho (talk • contribs) 12:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

What was he charged with?
Why mention that Kramer was tried, without saying what he was charged with?Royalcourtier (talk) 10:15, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Uruqhart
Why is Brian Uruqhart referenced. Lt Col Richard Taylor, the very first British officer to take charge, claimed he "had Kramer arrested". There is evidence that is was actually Major John Tonkin of 1st Regiment SAS in violent incident. But it definitely wasn't Uruqhart. Until I can get some weight behind the SAS involvement, which I have discovered is considerable, that should at least read Richard Taylor not Uruqhart or Hughes or Johnson or anyone else. Mark c lester (talk) 01:15, 25 March 2021 (UTC)